Following the reading of a blog by the former president of the eponymous company, these are my thoughts

At face value, that is true. But I lived/worked through the entire period, and I can tell you something that is missing from those pages: hubris. Yes, hubris. On the part of the companies I will list below, their CEOs, and upper management.

For a while back there, these guys owned the world: WordPerfect with WordPerfect, Lotus Development with Lotus 1-2-3, and Ashton-Tate with dBase. Their software was good, or good enough, familiar, and high-priced. And they liked it that way.

Unfortunately, they did not have the same vision about the ubiquity of computers that Bill Gates and Microsoft had. When Microsoft created the Office Suite and Windows, toast was what they became.

The facts must also have them developing products for OS/2. Which got no traction. With consumers. The IT press loved it, though.

We must also flagellate the CEOs of those companies for not being nimble. If they were outflanked, couldn't they regroup? Shame on them! The only company that was able to do so, leastways for a while was WordPerfect. Ashton-Tate was so shell-shocked that the were eclipsed by FoxPro, which MS later purchased. The only product to come out of Lotus after that was Notes.

Mmmm....those were the good times. Blood in the water and all!

I just read the piece: what a bunch of crap. This guy is a re-visionary. A read of business newspapers and magazines for the period in question would reveal something else.

I must add that complacency kills. When these guys ruled, they made small evolutionary changes to their software, not wanting to rock the boat. (I remember WP users & 'Pros' always telling me how you can edit the codes. Like I give a s**t! It is the user experience, stooopid!) Their focus groups were front-runners who wanted people to conform to the software. It is telling that even years after the release of Windows, WP users would open a DOS box to use it. It seemed that they had forgotten the lesson of the first big PC word processor, WordStar.

Microsoft, on the other hand innovated, fought relentlessly, and won. They did not invent the word processor, but they 'invented' the integrated office suite.

And MS management, when caught with a new trend trying to surpass their franchise, always tries to change on a dime: Server products, Exchange, IE, SharePoint, CRM, RSS, etc.

They make mistakes - BOB, always comes to mind, but they try. That is what good companies do: preserve their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders, their userbase, and their employees.

One thing you know about Microsoft is their tenaciousness. Windows was to be a vehicle to resume their primacy in OSs: they were not going to let it fail.

Furthermore, the only other GUI PC (Intel CPU) OS at that time, note that I'm discounting GEM, GEOworks, etc., was IBM's OS/2. At that time, Windows was in its 3rd or 4th revision (Win 1.0, 2.0, 286, 386, 3.0, 3.1), and they continued to improve it (innovate?) and add more enduser functionality.

However, the IT press loved OS/2. IT managers loved the fact that they could leverage their expertise with the command-line interface to retain their raised-floor superiority over their fiefdoms/users.

Hardware manufacturers hated it because it seemed optimized for IBM hardware. Cost too much. And user found the 'superb, object-oriented'** user-interface to be cold, unfriendly, and a totally new experience they would have to learn. And they stayed away in droves.

Thankfully, it died, and went the same way as other proprietary IBM technologies. (Another thread.)

Windows, on the other hand, was made available to all, and to, the end user, that most important of customers, easier to use than DOS, and seemingly more friendly. Plus, serious marketing. Again to the enduser, not to the IT reviewers, or to the tech cognoscenti, or to the IT folks.

** Prevailing view of the OS/2 user interface among the press.

The hallmark of a good company is having a vision and staying the course. If, as a gardener, you are faced with a wildly growing plant, you would prune the branches that were not needed. I applaud MS for that.

As for some companies wanting to get that last drop, pity them! At the end, they will be like that buggy maker, who despite seeing the handwriting on the wall, with the advent of automobiles, becomes very happy with its increasing market share. An increasing market share in a dying and soon to be extinct market.

You're right. Big-ups to them for recognizing and canning products that are floundering.

I think, though, that they use those products to move the technology and market forwards. In the instances mentioned, you will remember that prior to Microsoft's entry, the top consumer products in each of those segments were staid, and the prevailing view was that the Windows on Intel - wow, that sounds kind of kinky, so I'll say Wintel - platform, was outdated. So Microsoft kinda seeded the markets with these loss-leader products that did two things, 1) provided an immediate technological paradigm shift by changing what was accepted a state-of-the-art, and, 2) showed accessories manufacturer and consumers what to expect now and in the future.

If you look back at devices brought to market at amazing speeds shortly after MS enters a heretofore-productless space, you will remember that all of a sudden, devices became better, easier to use, and most importantly, cheaper. Speakers, routers, and hopefully, DIY VOIP kits. For the consumer.

After the seeding, Microsoft generally exits; after all, they are a platform company and serve the accessory manufacturer as clients as well.

Finally, as I said in an earlier post, I wait out Microsoft's forays into new hardware territories until they demonstrate a firm upgrade path for improvements. That said, I bought the speakers (sold to another schmo), and fell for the router. I really thought they were going to stay in that market.

The Vision Thing alone is not enough. The clarity of the vision, execution, and adaptation to changing market conditions are as important as the vision.

Can you believe that Kmart & Wal-Mart were formed in the same year? Which had a clearer vision? Which one executed better? Which one adapted to changing market situations?

The same can be said of Microsoft, and to a lesser degree, Oracle. Microsoft has had to adapt several times: the GUI, 32-bit computing, a server product, a database product, IE, enterprise mail, etc. Lots of failures but adapted, BORG-like to ambient conditions. Wasn't Microsoft's first Access a networking product or so? Internet Explorer 2.0, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

(And I sound like a schill for MS!)

There is a word I will borrow from Joe Wilcox (MicrosoftMonitor.com), and that is aspirational.

Apple's message always seems to be, "Aspire to do something new", and Microsoft, since the Windows 95 launch, seems to have inherited IBM's drones. For goodness sake, the ads seem to reiterate specs, not WIIFM.

Microsoft also invests massively in R&D, looking forwards 2years, 5 years, 10 years.

And while they might seem arrogant, they are afraid. Genuinely afraid of missing the next big trend.

This, and the gazillion dollars, must serve as primo motivation